It’s Really This Easy to Illegally Stream Spotify In Russia…

Spotify isn’t licensed to operate in Russia. So why is it so easy to use Spotify in Russia?

Spotify isn’t legally licensed for music fans in Russia, thanks to a number of complicated licensing circumstances. That includes a complex rights environment, though last we heard, Spotify opted to pull out of Russia last year based on economic instability. That sounds fair: after all, country launches are expensive and time-consuming for streaming services, and Spotify has yet to launch anywhere in Africa, not to mention critical Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea (here’s a list of currently-available, licensed countries).

Now, fresh questions are surfacing over whether fans in supposedly ‘unavailable’ countries are actually accessing the service with ease. Just this morning, a DMN reader living in Russia showed us just how easy it is to access Spotify in Russia.

Take a look:

Basically, this is dead simple. Just go to open.spotify.com or play.spotify.com, then pick your favorite artist, song, or playlist and go. It’s all right there, ready to go for anyone with a broadband connection.

All of which raises the next question: is anyone getting paid for this? After all, if Spotify isn’t licensed in this territory, none of these royalties are being collected by Russian labels, publishers, PROs, or other royalty groups. And if they are getting paid, who’s collecting on those plays?

Those questions now apply to other unlicensed countries, where the exact same workarounds might be happening. So far, we’ve only seen this in action from Spotify in Russia (but please share if you’re in another unlicensed part of the world).

And, for additional proof that this user is in a ‘blocked’ country, here’s the screenshot of the email itself (DMN is in California).

Cover image of the Kremlin shot by John Perry, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0).

17 Responses

This sounds like a VPN or proxy of some kind. Same thing happened with Netflix for a while. You could access Netflix with a VPN server located in another country, which allowed people to access content that was licensed in that country. Netflix eventually started blocking people who tried to access their service with a VPN. Spotify should probably do the same.

I suspect the artists and publishers who control the rights to the music in the territory where the proxy server is located would get paid.

Not true. Pandora doesn’t work overseas. I’ve used Spotify in unlicensed countries, but only with a US-based account, so it was legit (I think it stops working after a while, so it’s for travel essentially). But I’ve never tried a direct attempt like this on a restricted country like Russia.

This is from the swedes: “If you’re leaving the country, you can take your Spotify account with you.
With our Free service, you can use Spotify in a different country for 14 days.
If you’re staying abroad for more than 14 days, you’ll need to change your country settings to continue enjoying your tunes”. Now guess whose face the shit is on?

You’re all in the shit. This NEW account Spotify. It was created when on the territory of Russia. I live in Russia and have not previously enjoyed Spotify. But after reading the article I am now use for free and without advertising.

To enter Spotify I used Facebook account without specifying the place of residence. My account Spotify contains the USA country. My friend on Facebook was “Gothenburg (Sweden)” is listed city of residence, but he has never been there, and lives in Russia))) In his account Spotify contains USA TOO!!! Spotify has errors in the work. Your arguments – shit as you are.